• dactylotheca@suppo.fiOPEnglish
      21·
      8 days ago

      Having arguments would require having brains.

      Well, that’s a bit unfair to conservatives: some of them are psychopaths and not just cognitively challenged

        • dactylotheca@suppo.fiOPEnglish
          6·
          8 days ago

          Psychopathy is a personality construct. Sure, it can be used as a slur, but conservatives are actually more likely to be psychopaths. Or, to put it more accurately, they’re more likely to have dark triad / tetrad traits – psychopathy, machiavellianism, narcissism and everyday sadism.

          sources

          In the present research (N = 675), we focus on the relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism, respectively, in the course of a presidential election where the two candidates represent either left-wing or right-wing political policies. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism were associated with right-wing political orientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. Moreover, the relationships between personality and right-wing political orientation and extremism, respectively, were relatively independent from each other.

          We found eleven significant correlations between conservative [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad – [narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy,] all at significance level of p<.00001 – and no significant correlations between liberal [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments

          I ran a follow-up study testing the Dark Triad against conservative and liberal judgments on 15 additional moral issues. The new issues examined include illegal immigration, abortion, the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools, the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terrorism, laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and environmentalism.** 1154 participants […] Twenty-two significant correlations were observed between “conservative” judgments and the Dark Triad (all of which were significant past a Bonferonni-corrected significance threshold of p = .0008), compared to seven significant correlations between Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments (only one of which was significant past p = .0008).

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.caEnglish
            11·
            8 days ago

            The Dark Triad has been criticised by modern day scientists as pseudoscience rooted in historical bigotry. It’s nonsense with no empirical backing.

            • dactylotheca@suppo.fiOPEnglish
              2·
              8 days ago

              I don’t suppose you have a source for that? Frankly you seem to be convinced everything is bigotry

                • dactylotheca@suppo.fiOPEnglish
                  1·
                  8 days ago

                  That article seems to mainly criticize how dark triad theory can be used to stigmatize people:

                  One of the major criticisms of the dark triad theory also stems from its potential to stigmatize individuals living with Cluster B personality disorders

                  In fact, I can’t see anything in that that’d support your claim that the whole concept is pseudoscientific twaddle, and it mainly talks about how the dark triad / tetrad can be abused as a concept to stigmatize people, and there’s just one paragraph at the start that really even touches on other issues:

                  The lack of a clear definition of each trait, the focus on negative aspects of behavior, the failure to consider cultural and social factors, the limited explanatory power, and the potential for stigmatization all raise questions about the validity and usefulness of this model. While it may be useful in some context, researchers and practitioners should be cautious in its application and interpretation.

                  And none of those claims have any sort of sourcing for them. Elsewhere in the blog post there’s a link to a Science article that goes into a bit more detail, and it gave me the impression that – unlike what you claimed – the concept hasn’t been abandoned wholesale, and researchers acknowledge that it’s sometimes misused but don’t generally think it’s completely fundamentally broken as a concept. Some do, but some don’t – which is pretty common for this sort of stuff as there are very few hard truths in psychology